Video game characters are funny old things. Canon is as important as the look of the character, if the story mentions a character’s war wounds without mentioning how a character got that all important scar on their left cheek, expect the fans to be outraged.

Change the look of the character and the fans will be up in arms too. In fact, video game fans are even protective about whose sultry, dulcet tones gets to voice the words and expressions that leave their favourite characters’ mouths. Imagine, then, that for Metal Gear Solid V, publisher of the franchise, Konami, have elected to change the voice of Solid Snake after 15 years.

David Hayter is the very person behind said smooth Solid Snake voice acting, having voiced the esteemed character (and unofficial PlayStation mascot) for over 15 years, in which he took on the voice based role of the man in the cardboard box in 9 different games (Hayter too voiced the character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which was released for the Nintendo Wii). Needless to say, Hayter may not be the face of Solid Snake but he is undoubtedly the voice that made the character as popular as Snake is today.

While Konami themselves (as in, the publisher and not anyone on the dev team) haven’t voiced their official reasoning for leaving Hayter’s famous voice out of the game, the cause is yet unknown to the actor himself as he says that even he doesn’t truly understand why he was left out, saying that he was “up in Toronto, for the past eight months, directing [his] first film. On the December break, [He] came home to Los Angeles for the holidays. [Hayter had] heard then, that recording sessions for MG:V were being put together. But [he] didn’t hear anything about whether [he’d] be needed or not. So, [he] got in touch with someone involved in the production. [They] got together for lunch, and [the production staffer] told [Hayter] that [Konami] ‘wouldn’t be needing [Hayter]’ on this game. No reason, or explanation was given beyond that. And that was it.”

However, while Hayter, nor publisher Konami doesn’t have the answers, someone who does, is Hideo Kojima, the world renowned video game developer who is of course, responsible for the Metal Gear franchise and who is working on Metal Gear Solid V too. Speaking to GameTrailers, Kojima explains that “what [the development team are] trying to accomplish here is to recreate the Metal Gear series. It’s a new type of Metal Gear game and [the dev team] want to have this reflected in the voice actor as well”.

While that explains it, it does still leave some room for worry for players as it leaves them asking just how drastic are these changes to the MGS series if Metal Gear Solid V requires the sacking of the game’s most noted voice actor?

We’ll keep you posted on said developments in Metal Gear Solid V as we know more.